On our way out of Louisiana we stopped at a seafood restaurant called Crawfish Town USA. My parents really wanted to stop somewhere for crawfish, and we just so happened across this huge restaurant. We went all out on seafood and ordered their two festival platters to share. Between them they came with stuffed crab, stuffed shrimp, crawfish boulette, frog leg, fried catfish, fried shrimp, fried oysters, seafood jambalaya, boiled crawfish, fried crawfish tails, crawfish pie, crawfish etouffee, french fries, and rolls. We went there for the experience and it certainly was one. That was enough seafood to last me the rest of my life! We spent the rest of the day driving, and by the time we made it to our hotel in Housten, we were all ready for bed.

The next morning we went to an adorable diner called The Egg and I. Their customized bottle of hot sauce cracked me up. I was pleased to find that their menu had an ample selection of healthier entrees after our loaded dinner the night before. We filled up because we had a long day at NASA planned!

We got the super supreme Level 9 VIP Tour. It was epic.

While waiting for our tour we explored the Houston Space Center. I learned so much!

The first stop on our tour was the Saturn V Rocket Park. Huge doesn't even begin to describe it!

After that we went to different buildings around the NASA campus. Here we learned about robots they're working to send into outer space.

We were also informed about NASA's Orion project that hopes to send humans to Mars. It's still a long way off, but they're working on it!

Our tour guide also told us of some of the many expenses of space travel. The main model of spacesuit shown on the left below costs around $24 million to make. The Russian pod that travels to the International Space Station every three months charges about $80 million per seat.

Spacesuits are also incredibly heavy. This was the largest one I saw on the tour and it weighed around 310 pounds.

The layers of suiting up.

These are the original Apollo 11 spacesuits.

The Mission Control Center. I was completely blown away by this room and had brief desires to drop everything I'm studying now to somehow make it into this work environment.

The new above and the old below. So many incredible things happened in the old control room, but it looks so outdated and clunky compared to the one above!

Our last stop at the Space Center was Independence Plaza. So amazing. I was in awe during this entire tour at mankind's ability to make such incredible events take place.

The day after our amazing time at NASA and the Johnson Space Center, we took a trip to Galveston to see the Gulf of Mexico. This is it and it was beautiful. I only wish it wasn't so cold when we went.

Despite only being in the 50s, I had to stick my feet in the water to be able to say I'd done it! BURR!

What's a trip to the beach without collecting treasures?

After the beach we headed down to a local historic point to watch some boats coming in.

We spent the rest of our second day in Texas relaxing. After going to Galveston we stopped at a sandwich shop called Schlotzsky's and then spent the rest of the day in the hotel room watching Netflix and out visiting the hot tub. An important element of vacation is not being on the go all the time.

The next day we headed off to our next and final big city on our trip. Before leaving the Houston area though, we stopped to view a WW2 battle ship.